The Wild Coast SDI is setting local communities against each other, report Thembela Kepe, Lungisile Ntsebeza and Ben Cousins
Simmering beneath the surface of the Wild Coast Spatial Development Initiative (SDI), announced with great fanfare last month, are conflicts and tensions that could blow the much- vaunted investment initiative sky high.
In some areas a disregard for local complexities is threatening to provoke a local civil war; in others a fast-track approach to development could be creating a false sense of consensus while lighting the fuse of a time bomb.
In mid-April, upbeat Cabinet ministers announced that up to R400- million would be invested in more than 30 projects, creating more than 20 000 jobs. The SDI, according to its promoters, will alleviate rural poverty by creating an “enabling framework” for investment, based on partnership between the government, the private sector and local communities.
Development nodes on the Wild Coast include ecotourism projects in Mkambati, Port St Johns, Coffee Bay, Hole-in-the-Wall and Dwesa/Cwebe, tea-growing at Magwa, and forestry at various sites along the coast. It is argued that these projects will benefit not only local community members but the Eastern Cape as a whole.
Key components of the economic empowerment models proposed by the Development Bank of Southern Africa are community co- responsibility for planning and decision-making in tourism and other ventures, and community control of the underlying resource base, the land.
But translating these fine-sounding principles into practice has been problematic, and in several cases the SDI has succeeded only in dividing communities and setting various interest groups at each other’s throats.
Our field research in several sites reveals four crucial weaknesses in the Wild Coast SDI. Firstly, there are fundamental differences between the approaches adopted by different government departments. Secondly, there is inadequate co- ordination between the various agencies involved (the government, NGOs and consultants).
Thirdly, there is a potentially disastrous emphasis on “fast- track” development, at the expense of an adequate understanding of local realities. And fourthly, consultation and “participation” in decision-making have often been limited to discussions with an unrepresentative minority.
Government departments active in the SDI appear to operate according to different development paradigms. The Department of Land Affairs emphasises Reconstruction and Development Programme principles of democratic decision-making and community empowerment, and argues that SDI investments will occur on communal land that rightfully belongs to local people (even though it is still nominally owned by the government). Local communities are seen as the most important stakeholders within the SDI.
In contrast, the Department of Trade and Industry, the main “champion” of the SDIs, appears to be more closely aligned to the growth, employment and redistribution macro-economic strategy. It gives priority to the needs of investors, without whom, it is argued, no meaningful development will ever take place.
It has taken many months for officials of this department to accept that land rights on the Wild Coast vest in communities rather than the state, and that this gives communities the status of property owners rather than “beneficiaries” who must accept whatever the government manages to negotiate on their behalf.
Poor co-ordination is a major source of concern within the SDI. For example, plans for forestry development by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry include encouraging commercial companies to initiate projects on communal land – which the minister of land affairs, as nominal owner, is planning to transfer to its current occupants. It is completely unclear who these companies should be negotiating with – the government or local communities – and on what terms.
A great deal of confusion is being caused by unco-ordinated approaches to community groups. Poor co- ordination also characterises the approach to the resolution of land claims within SDI project areas (which in many cases are far from resolved, in contradiction to claims to this effect at the launch of the Wild Coast SDI in Port St Johns).
The “fast-track” mindset, together with a slipshod approach to community consultation, is resulting in a far-from-democratic decision- making process. Consultation with an educated rural elite that has access to transport and to cellphones makes for speed, but not for proper report-backs and debate within the community. Conflict at the local level is the inevitable result.
Two SDI sites where severe tensions are being generated are Mkambati and Coffee Bay.
In Mkambati an explosive situation exists. Negotiations with outsiders are taking place in relation to development on large areas of land where hotly disputed claims are as yet unresolved. SDI committees have been “elected” and trained without adequate community-level discussion, and an unco-ordinated flood of SDI “experts” into the area has served only to exacerbate the conflict.
In Coffee Bay the fast-track approach has resulted in different problems, though in less severe conflict so far.
There was little in the way of preparation to ensure proper community participation in last month’s launch of the Wild Coast SDI at Port St Johns, or in the investors conference at Mzamba which followed.
Resentment of the paternalistic approach adopted by the SDI is growing within the local community, and could explode into real anger if it is not acknowledged. We must emphasise that we are not “anti-development”, and certainly not against the SDI – the initiative definitely has the potential to bring much-needed capital to a neglected region.
But we are against development projects that pay only lip-service to democratic decision-making, fail to take properly into account people’s property rights, and are likely to result in the capture of benefits by local elites.
More importantly, local communities are past the point of passively accepting the sale of their birthright – the land and its resources – from under their feet. In defence of their rights, they are prepared to go to war.
In our view the SDI must slow down, take a long, hard look at itself and begin to negotiate in good faith with the full range of local community interests. The alternative is a quick road to hell, rather than the “road to prosperity” it aspires to be at present.
ENDS